Beginning of YULE (Solstice) REVELRIES: known as Yule Girth by the Saxons & Goths, 'Christmas' being no more of a Christian festival than Easter.
Celebrate your own feasts without fuelling the consumer economy. & take it to the max — traditionally this holiday season was invariably continued to 7 January.

1307 -- NeXt?: Without an overture, William Tell shoots an Apple off his son's head. Rotten to the core is he...inspiring the admonishment, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

1477 -- First dated book printed in England, Earl Rivers' Dictes & Sayenges of the Phylosophers, published by William Caxton's press in Westminster Abbey.

1497 -- There is Hope?: Bartolomeu Dias discovers Cape of Good Hope.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Dias was the first European to see the Cape of Good Hope, as it had been there for millions of years (after Africa split from South America) & there were Africans living there?

— Bleedster Michael C., 2005

1686 -- France: Run, Run, Runs? King of France Louis XIV's anal fistula is operated on by surgeon Charles Francois Felix, with great success. To prepare for the operation Felix practiced his surgery on anuses of the peasantry, with some fatalities at first but improving his technique in time for the royal bung.

1865 -- Mark Twain has instant success with his first fictional piece, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (New York Saturday Press). The first author to type a manuscript & also to double-space it for his editor's convenience, he extols his Remington: "It don't muss things or scatter ink blots around."

Emma Goldman's The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914) popularized the work of Henrik Ibsen & other European playwrights for American readers & helped to inspire the experimental little theatre movement in the United States. The Studio Players, an anarchist theatre company led by Lillian Udell, performed worker-oriented plays at the Radical Bookshop…

"Anarchism." Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2003.

1882 -- Author Wyndham Lewis (The Apes of God) lives (1882-1957), on a yacht off Amherst, Nova Scotia. Published Blast, a magazine, intended to be the focal point of a new movement in art & letters, Vorticism. Excellent page on Lewis at

1896 -- US:
Emma Goldman, following an appearance in Buffalo, November 18-26, lectures to enthusiastic audiences in Pittsburgh, primarily in German, & continues to raise money for the Alexander Berkman fund.

Topics include "The Jews in America," "Anarchism in America," & "The Effect of the Recent Election on the Condition of the Workingmen." Her concluding lecture addresses the Haymarket Affair.

"We stay locked in the immense industrial prisons where we lose our strength, our youth, where our rights are shattered before the greed of the bourgeois. & we don't rebel against these injustices for a right to our lives? & we don’t shake with rage before the pompous & contemptuous lady who wears a silk shirt from our humble labor?

We must rise up against our oppressors, all of us, & in us will shine the faith of a better future."

1906 -- US: George Wald, anti-war activist, Nobel-winning physician, lives, New York City. An avowed pacifist, he campaigned against the Vietnam war & all forms of nuclear testing. He also served on the People's Tribunal established in 1985 to inquire into the genocide of Armenians by the Turks.

1910 -- England: Hundreds of suffragists march on House of Commons, London, with reinforcements arriving to replace the "fallen" & arrested. Protesting government inaction on Conciliation Bill, they are brutally repulsed by Bobbies, leading to a public outcry.

1916 -- A Quitter?: Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I, calls off the Battle of the Somme in the Somme River region of France after nearly five months of mass slaughter.

The massive Allied offensive, which began at 7:30 A.M. on July 1, 1916, amounted to a total gain of just 125 square miles along the Western Front, at a cost of over 600,000 British & French soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in action. German casualties were over 650,000.

1919 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Woody Wilson urges Congress to accept no compromises on Versailles Treaty, with League of Nations Covenant. Pass in pure form or vote against it he argues. 3/4 of the Senate favored League membership, but the Treaty was defeated.

1939 -- Margaret Atwood, lives, Ottawa, Canada. Poet, novelist, & critic noted for her Canadian nationalism & her feminism. First published at 19, her first book of poetry, Double Persephone, appears in 1961. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/calendar.htm

1951 -- US: Former Cubs first baseman, & future TV star of "Rifleman," Chuck Connors is the first player to oppose the draft.

1952 -- Paul Éluard, dies, Charenton-le-Pont, France. French poet. At the beginning of his creative work he was linked with the Paris dada movement, later with surrealism. Editor of the periodical "Proverbe." Collaborated in numerous dadaist publications. His later work, after the Spanish Revolution, focused on the rejection of tyranny, suffering, brotherhood, & a search for happiness.

Paul Eluard I have seen stomped by cops & mechanics on a piano & among broken bulbs, thirty to one against this somersault of the stars.

Another wise move on Man Ray's part is the way they purposefully play a maximum two shows a month in Seattle, to keep club-goers from getting sick of them. & those who have watched the band from the beginning say its members have always been more than nice to fans, taking the time to talk with everyone who approaches them after shows.

1992 -- US: 1,000 join memorial run to honor a woman murdered while training for a local marathon, Buffalo, New York.

1994 -- Canada: After massive international protest by indigenous & environmental activists, Quebec puts on "indefinite hold" (& later formally cancels) plans to build a massive hydroelectric project on Cree & Inuit land on the eastern shore of James Bay.

1995 -- Brazil: Founding of Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG - Gaucha Anarchist Federation). Follows a year of organizational preparation & representatives from various parts of Rio Grande meeting today with a delegate of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) to found the new organization. They prefer to see each day as November 18 (see 1918 above).
anarchismo, anarchici, anarquista / Brasil 18 novembre 1995 novembrohttp://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1884http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/international/fag_fao03a.htm

1996 -- Dominican Republic: At least 100 heavily-armed Dominican police entered a squatters' settlement known as "El Café," on the outskirts of Santo Domingo, to evict approximately 600 families.

The police fire weapons & tear gas, wounding at least 10 residents. One police officer reportedly fired at Alfredo D'Oleo Encarnación, who was unarmed & standing on his patio, killing him. The government has not concluded its investigation of the El Café incident at this writing.

I mean, really, what's the point? I'm not European, I don't plan on being European, so who gives a crap if they're socialist? They could be fascist anarchists, that still wouldn't change the fact that I don't own a car.

Not that I condone fascism, or any ism for that matter. Isms in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself.

I quote John Lennon: "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." A good point there. Of course he was the Walrus. I could be the Walrus, I'd still have to bum rides off of people...

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop & look around once in a while you could miss it...